Time and time again, I hear people advocating...well, murder, really. It's strange how we always leap to violence as a means to an end. A quote by Nietzsche nicely sums up my feelings on the death penalty:[i]"Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one."[/i]
When we kill killers, we become the killers ourselves. What we do is no better than what they do. Showing mercy to murderers is what separates us from them. If there's not that distinction, then we're not a system of ideals, we're just a regime.
Opinions?
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Everyone has their own morals and lots of people's moral code includes certain actions being more acceptable when done in vengeance. For example many people believe it is morally sound to kill someone because they killed someone else, so arguing against the death penalty purely from a moral standpoint is difficult and you're not going to convince people. I think that the much stronger argument against the death penalty (this the reason why it was banned in the UK) is that there is a danger of executing innocent people. If you imprison a convicted murderer and they are later found to be innocent you can release them and give them compensation. If you killed them and then find out that they were innocent, you're in a bit of a difficult situation.